Sex Education

The shining through line of Sex Education is the dedication to both the physical and emotional messiness of sex.

One of the best things about this show is the fact that so many of these characters do feel like kids--not hyper-articulate young adults, but scrambling teenagers who don’t really know how they feel about anything--they just know they feel it.

Sex Education blends teen sex-romp tropes with a refreshing level of empathy. [11 Jan 2019, p.44]

Sex Education is pretty much the most adorable show I’ve seen in a long time. It’s frank and sincere and gleefully awkward. As an anatomy of teen sexuality, it’s basically peerless, and it offers a thoughtful script, a strikingly good cast and a heart-forward story about “owning your narrative.”

Iimmaculately, densely written, glorious creation. ... And it’s funny. Endlessly and seemingly effortlessly funny, in a naturalistic way that doesn’t have you listening for the hooves of the next gag thundering down a well-worn track but, like Catastrophe, catches you almost unawares and makes you bark with laughter.

Under Nunn and directors Ben Taylor and Kate Herron (each of whom helm four episodes), this is a series that modernizes the genre to embrace every kind of kid--the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads, all of 'em!--and without pandering to any singular point of view in doing so.

There’s the usual problem of Netflix drift for an episode or two midway through, where the plot dawdles while the writers and producers figure out an ending. Yet there’s an artfulness to the material and a genuine care on display here, too--a message that we are not just about the size and shape and inventive uses of our private parts.

Sex Education is one of the rare works that go beyond that trope to give depth and validation to teenage insecurities and emotions that coexist with raging hormones and mythic sex drives.

Sex Education is just as much about the triumphs, the times things do go right, and the consequences of emotional vulnerability that ultimately make it a happy and satisfying watch.

There’s so much more than the vast majority of those teen comedies ever truly touch, and so it’s wonderfully refreshing to watch Sex Education address these more specific questions on-screen with such care and humor.

The show is graphic, gross, and inherently earnest: No matter how mortifying Otis might find his mother, he’s internalized her refusal to judge anyone.

The series strains at first to establish the procedural format: a little bit “Masters of Sex,” a little bit “Doogie Howser, XXX.” But it blooms, over eight episodes, into a smart, sensitive look at teens finding their place and figuring out the owner’s manuals for their bodies.

The result is a wonderful ensemble in which every character is presented one way, usually for immediately comic value, and then taken to unexpected or, if slightly expected, compassionate places. The supporting characters and performances deepen as the show goes along.

Sex Education won’t be for everybody. The humor is often very dark, the awkwardness so cringe-inducing it can be difficult to watch. But like a well-meaning teen therapist, its intentions are so good that it’s difficult to hold much against the series. Like a generous partner, it’s willing to experiment and find a balance that works. And like sex--like good sex anyway--it’s often an absolute pleasure.

Anderson is a comic delight. (Her enthusiastic delivery of the phrase “man milk” will stay with you.) And unsurprisingly, she’s terrific in the more dramatic moments when Jean tries to help her son deal with his own trauma. Butterfield is enormously charming, palpably vulnerable and deft with the jokes, like the hero of a movie John Hughes wrote for a young John Cusack but never got to make. ... A standout new teen comedy.

"Sex" is not for everyone (pun intended), but if you're game for explicit scenes and dialogue and appreciate English wit, it's a cheerfully hilarious (but safely distant) return to puberty. If any series can make adult viewers appreciate getting past that life stage, it's this one.

It’s a far-fetched premise: Can you imagine anyone in high school, where gossip is a commodity and kids are desperate to look more experienced than they really are, paying to confess their sexual dysfunctions to a peer? Yet Sex Education earns the suspension of disbelief it requires. Populated by multidimensional characters with sympathetic problems, the show embodies–and espouses–some of TV’s most progressive views on sex.